New paintings
The painting on the floor, Arts Guild, is my newest painting. I’ve worked on it steadily this week. The underpainting is done and I started the first overpainting yesterday. It’s 40″ x 54.” Arts Guild is still a baby and has a long way to go before it grows up. On the left-hand canvas, I
Utrecht is dead to me
Flake white is critical for oil painting. I buy flake white from RGH, Blue Ridge, and (occasionally) Utrecht. I discovered this past weekend that Utrecht doesn’t sell flake white any longer. This unwanted discovery kills the Utrecht brand for me. Their oil paint is decidedly on the low-end of professional brands. Except for their flake
More RGH oils
I’ve written a lot about the small paint manufacturer RGH for several reasons. First, I always support the small suppliers who are inspired by a high view of the craft. Suppliers such as RGH and James Grove are rare. Importantly, they continue to produce the all-important lead-based paints. Also, I use their stuff in my
Sable brushes
Sable brushes are the best. There’s no debate about this. Sure, there are some use cases where the benefits of sable are irrelevant. The fine control provided by sables is lost on large-format oil paintings, for example. So on large paintings, why go to the expense? And–oh boy!–sable brushes are expensive. I paid $60+ over
I bought manganese violet
Like the title says, I bought some manganese violet. Some artists maintain that they can reproduce every color by using a small collection of paints. While it’s true that you can create a tremendous variety of colors with a limited palette, it’s not true that you can reproduce every color that way. There are a
Stiff
Stiff paint, stiff muscles, stiff brain. This describes my afternoon. I finished a painting this morning and celebrated with a piece of pumpkin pie leftover from Thanksgiving. Back in the studio, I started working on this large painting that is in mid-career. Not in the starting stage but nowhere near the finishing stage either. I
Don’t go to art school
Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, likes to say that degrees from the nonprestigious schools are just expensive dunce caps. He means that today higher education is close to worthless, except that degrees from the top schools still get you interviews. I think he’s right. Don’t go to college unless you’re in the right STEM
Watercolors yes
I was a little rusty with watercolors when I started this painting. It’s good-quality paper but I forgot to dampen it before I started. Duh. I finally got it going and finished it quickly (for me–2 sessions). I plan a series of small (9″ x 12″) watercolors like this one. The goal is to keep